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Standard tenancy agreement amended to prevent blanket ban on pets

Published On: January 29, 2021 at 9:31 am

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Categories: Landlord News,Tenant News

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New pet friendly measures introduced under Rented Homes Bill “potential gamechanger for dog owners” says Dogs Trust

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has announced a change to the Government’s standard tenancy agreement in England.

In a press release published yesterday, the Government states that landlords are no longer able to issue a blanket ban on pets. The aim is for the new standard tenancy agreement to make it easier for tenants with pets to find rented accommodation. 

The statement goes on to say: “Instead, consent for pets will be the default position, and landlords will have to object in writing within 28 days of a written pet request from a tenant and provide a good reason.”

Housing Minister Rt Hon Christopher Pincher MP commented: We are a nation of animal lovers and over the last year more people than ever before have welcome pets into their lives and homes.

“But it can’t be right that only a tiny fraction of landlords advertise pet-friendly properties and in some cases, people have had to give up their beloved pets in order to find somewhere to live.

“Through the changes to the tenancy agreement we are making today, we are bringing an end to the unfair blanket ban on pets introduced by some landlords. This strikes the right balance between helping more people find a home that’s right for them and their pet while ensuring landlords’ properties are safeguarded against inappropriate or badly-behaved pets.”

Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities & Local Government, has Tweeted: “Too few renters can enjoy the pleasure and companionship of pets. We’ve updated the standard tenancy agreement to make allowing well behaved pets the norm – and are encouraging all landlords and agents to adopt it.”

Jen Berezai, Co-founder of AdvoCATS, comments: “AdvoCATS welcomes the new Model Tenancy Agreement announced by the Ministry of Housing, it’s fantastic news and a huge step forward for all those who have campaigned for change. Now, responsible pet owning tenants, many of whom have previously been forced to choose between their pet vs a roof over their heads, will find it much easier to keep their family together.

“AdvoCATSeastmids is a voluntary organisation that offers a free support and advice service to landlords and tenants where a tenant wants to bring a pet or pets into a rented property. For more information, including a DIY Top Tips section for those outside the core East Midlands area, please visit www.advocatseastmids.org.uk.”

Mark Hayward, Chief Policy Adviser of Propertymark comments: “Whilst we acknowledge that allowing pets can make a property more desirable and encourage tenants to rent for longer, even the best-behaved pets will have an impact on a property.

“The UK Government must recognise the impact of their decision to cap deposits and the knock-on costs that landlords face. This is a complex issue that is determined on a case-by-case basis highlighting the need for landlords to get advice from a professional letting agent.”

Read the full press release here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-standard-tenancy-agreement-to-help-renters-with-well-behaved-pets

Landlords can access the Government’s model agreement for a shorthold assured tenancy here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/model-agreement-for-a-shorthold-assured-tenancy

Five home improvements you can make for under £100

Published On: January 28, 2021 at 11:55 am

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five home improvements you can make for under £100

With Google searches for DIY once again on the increase during the latest lockdown, Hitachi Personal Finance has looked at five home improvements you can make for under £100:

1. Painting a room

A fresh lick of paint can really brighten up a room and is something that can easily be done yourself. Rather than paying for a professional decorator, consider investing in some brushes and rollers.

According to research by Priceyourjob, painting all the main rooms, such as the lounge, kitchen, bedrooms, and bathroom, will cost an average of £71.

2. Kitchen spruce ups

Hitachi Personal Finance believes it can be simple and cheap to make just a couple of subtle changes to change the whole complexion of the room. 

The company highlights that adding or swapping a glass hob splashback can cost as little as £60, whilst tiling a wall could be just what you need to reinvigorate your kitchen area. The cost depends on the type of tile and size of your kitchen, but according to Checkatrade, the average kitchen tiling will set you back just £35 per square metre.

3. New curtains and blinds

Replacing old drapes with something more vibrant and colourful can really make a difference. Providing you have had them installed previously, just replacing curtains or roll-up blinds might not cost as much as you think. Home interior retailers such as Dunelm sell a range of curtains for between £50-£90 that can completely transform the feel of a room. 

4. Decluttering

A simple way to improve the feel of your entire home is organising and decluttering from top to bottom. Excess belongings are commonplace in a lot of households and can often be forgotten for long periods, leading to even the most spacious properties feeling cramped and messy.

Taking the time to go through each room, organising which items to keep and which you want to recycle or donate to charity, can free up storage space.

5. Sprucing up your front door

Don’t forget about the exterior of your home, as improvements on the outside can add value to your property.

Sanding down and re-painting your front door will help alleviate any looks of tiredness from the outside and add ‘kerb appeal’. Although this sounds like a big job, the average cost of the paint and tools required to take this project on can be attainable for around £80, based on suggestions from B&Q.

Vincent Reboul, Managing Director at Hitachi Capital Consumer Finance, commented: “The start of the year is often a time of reflection, and this applies to our homes as well as our careers and personal lives. The lockdown means even more of us will be looking to take on home improvements in the coming months. 

“Although a lot of DIY jobs can be quite large and costly projects, there are certainly tweaks and changes we can be making ourselves to have similar benefits without forking out huge sums of money.

“We hope this guide inspires homeowners looking to try their hand at a few upgrades to give their house a fresh feel for 2021.” 

Over £180,000 of tenancy deposits left unclaimed by tenants in Scotland

Published On: January 25, 2021 at 9:07 am

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Categories: Tenant News

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Edinburgh’s first Green Home Festival to demonstrate how Scotland can build a more sustainable future

SafeDeposits Scotland has revealed that tenants in the west of Scotland could be due a share of £188,851, after failing to claim back deposits at the end of their tenancies.

The Glasgow-based organisation is a government-approved tenancy deposit scheme that holds deposits on behalf of landlords and agents. When a tenancy ends and all parties agree to repayment, the scheme then releases the funds back to the tenant. 

SafeDeposits reports that currently, the G postcode alone has 572 unclaimed deposits with a combined value of £153,458, with one individual claim worth £1,950. In total across Scotland, there are around 2,513 unclaimed deposits, amounting to £690,383. 

One Greenock resident, Gary Crawford, was recently contacted by SafeDeposits Scotland about his unclaimed deposit after he left his property in October.  

Gary said: “There was a bit of a mix-up when I left the property I was renting. I didn’t realise it was a rolling contract and due to the notice I gave, I was led to believe I wouldn’t get my deposit back. It was one of those things where I just assumed that was that, and I put it out of my mind. 

“A week or so before Christmas I got a call out of the blue from SafeDeposits Scotland where I was told I’d be getting my full deposit back. It was such a pleasant surprise, especially just in time to spend over the festive period. It was really simple once they had got in touch. I shared my bank details and the money was in my account within the week. Going forward, I will always make sure to check what I am due and I’d urge others to seek advice if they’re not 100% sure.”

In 2020, SafeDeposits Scotland tracked down 1,246 tenants across the country that had forgotten to claim their deposits back. They managed to return £470,320 from the scheme to these tenants. 

The organisation also looked into the quantity of deposits it holds for longer-standing tenancies. The average tenure length for tenancies with deposits protected by SafeDeposits Scotland is just over 2.5 years. However, the scheme found over 4,500 active deposit accounts for tenancies of 10 years or more. 

There are 1,275 long-standing tenancies in the G, PA, KA, and ML postcode areas, with tenancies in both Glasgow and Greenock starting in 1988. While many of these tenancies will still be active, there may be some cases where a tenancy has ended and none of the parties have ever instigated the repayment process.

Mike Smith, operations manager at SafeDeposits Scotland, comments: “Our priority is to make sure tenants’ deposits are safe for the duration of their tenancy, and that both landlords and tenants have access to our dispute resolution service should there be any disagreement over the deposit once the tenancy ends. 

“Glasgow is home to 56,000 private rented properties and it’s predicted that this number will grow to 70,000 by 2028, influenced by factors such as recent high-profile financial services investments seen across the city that will lead to an increase in people looking to rent ahead of starting new employment. But it’s part of our job to make sure that people, including those moving into new houses, remember to claim their deposits back from previous tenancies.

“We’ve found that hundreds of people have left their Glasgow homes without claiming back their deposit, some of which are worth hundreds of pounds. These are instances where a landlord has instructed for the deposit to be repaid to the tenant, but the tenant hasn’t completed the process to receive their funds. We’ve also discovered that there are hundreds of older tenancies, some of which may be no longer active and with deposits to be repaid.

“Moving home can be a busy time but there’s no reason why a tenant shouldn’t claim their deposit back when they leave.”

Latest government House Price Index released: Prices continue to rise

Published On: January 22, 2021 at 9:01 am

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The commuter belt rental markets where tenants can reduce their rent by as much as half

The Government has published its latest UK House Price Index, revealing statistics for November 2020. The highlights include:

  • The average price of a property in the UK was £249,633
  • Average UK house prices increased by 7.6% in the year to November 2020
  • Average house prices in the UK increased by 1.2% between October and November 2020

Read the full report here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-house-price-index-summary-november-2020/uk-house-price-index-summary-november-2020

Nicky Stevenson, Managing Director at national estate agent group Fine & Country, comments: “The COVID mini-boom was still in full swing in November, and it’s a measure of how strong the market was last year that a huge monthly leap in the annual growth rate doesn’t even surprise us anymore. 

“This was also a month that saw a second national lockdown, which buyers are expected to have taken in their stride, but that won’t necessarily show in these figures for a couple of months.

“Fast forward to January and confidence seems to be taking some punches. There’s been a negativity soup served up this week, with the stamp duty deadline now too close for comfort, but let’s not forget that when the pandemic erupted some were predicting massive house price falls in 2020. They never materialised and that wasn’t just down to the stamp duty holiday, which many now think was either unnecessary or rolled out too early, but rather a dramatic shift in the type of property people wanted to live in and its location. 

“The hunger to move because of repeated lockdowns is being underpriced and levels of agreed sales reported since November do still point to a resilient market. We will only have to wait a couple of weeks to see if this has continued through January, which is when most buyers could no longer really hope to transact in time. 

“It remains to be seen how many buyers really will pull out of purchases if they can’t claim the relief. Widespread renegotiations up and down chains are probably a more realistic outcome. When you’ve found the perfect house, it’s easy to say you’ll walk away but it’s much harder to do. Remember that most first-time buyers already benefited from a significant stamp duty discount even before the scheme began.  

“One headwind for the market that has been largely ignored concerns a huge drop in the UK’s population. In the past week, the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence said official statistics had missed the fact that the population hadn’t grown last year but had actually fallen 1.3m since the pandemic began, aided by an exodus of over half a million foreign-born residents. It said that this represented the largest fall in the UK resident population since World War 2. This could have a dramatic impact on demand, even if that loss first makes itself felt in the rental market, with better value rentals reducing overall purchase demand.”

Housing Hand shares its expectations for the private rental sector in 2021

Published On: January 20, 2021 at 9:19 am

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Housing Hand shares its expectations for private rental sector in 2021

UK rental guarantor service Housing Hand has shared its expectations for 2021, including the issues that the private rented sector may face this year.

It has gained insight into the difficulties faced by the private rental sector from the landlords and tenants they work with across the UK. According to Group Managing Director Jeremy Robinson, 2021 could be a bumpy year for the rental market.

Robinson comments: “The pandemic has created a number of issues, ranging from tenants becoming unable to pay their rent to would-be renters experiencing difficulties during the referencing process. The latest lockdown and its subsequent economic impact have the potential to exacerbate these problems significantly.”

Turning the focus to Brexit, Terry Mason, Group Operations Director of Housing Hand, believes the impact of changes to flows of workers and students into the UK from Europe will be increasingly felt over the course of 2021. He comments: “A large number of those who travel to the UK for work or study rent their homes privately while here. Landlords who serve that market are going to feel the impact of Brexit strongly this year.”

The ongoing effects of COVID-19 are also predicted to hit the student private rental market. Housing Hand states that if universities deliver courses virtually rather than in-person come the start of the new academic year in September, there’s likely to be a significant impact on those who usually let properties to students.

The expectations for rural areas and the Home Counties are more positive, with such locations enjoying a surge in rental demand as tenants move out of London and other major cities. Housing Hand anticipates this trend continuing in 2021.

Terry Mason comments: “Lockdown 3.0 will once again emphasise the benefits of renting larger properties with outside space. The Office for National Statistics reports that 21% of London’s households have no access to a garden, either private or shared. The lower cost of renting outside of the city means that a garden suddenly becomes much more affordable.”

Increasing rents for larger homes continued into last quarter of 2020, says The DPS

Published On: January 19, 2021 at 9:24 am

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Categories: Lettings News

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Student accommodation rent prices are up as much as 26% in parts of Britain

UK rent levels continued to rise faster for larger properties during the last quarter of 2020, according to the latest edition of The Deposit Protection Service’s (The DPS) quarterly Rent Index.

The Rent Index is based on its database of 1.8 million current tenancies and 13 years of data. It shows that the average monthly cost of renting a detached property in the UK between October and December 2020 was £1,055. This is £29 (2.83%) more than in Q3 2020 and £57 (5.71%) more than Q4 2019.

The average rent for semi-detached homes increased to £847 in Q4 2020. This is £19 (2.29%) more than in the previous quarter (Q3) and £33 (4.05%) more than in the same period the previous year (Q4 2019).

It has been recorded that the cost of renting a flat has increased at a much slower rate than that of renting larger properties. This is despite the cost of renting a flat increasing at a faster rate in Q4 of 2020 than at the beginning of that year.

Average rent by property type
Property typeQ4 2020Q3 20202020 Q4 vs 2020 Q3 % change Q4 20192020 Q4 vs 2019 Q4% change 
Detached£1,055£1,0262.83%£9985.71%
Semi-detached£847£8282.29%£8144.05%
Flats£803£7951.10%£7941.13%
All£792£7801.54%£7732.46%

Matt Trevett, Managing Director at The DPS, comments: “Lockdown has meant many more people are spending longer at home, including far more extensive remote working, and as a consequence more tenants are seeking larger properties with more space.

“While there seems to be a particular focus on detached and semi-detached properties, the rental market as a whole remained remarkably resilient throughout much of 2020, despite broader economic uncertainties and restrictions that affected home viewings and public movement during the first national lockdown.”

Paul Fryers, Managing Director at Zephyr Homeloans which, like The DPS, is part of the Computershare Group, said: “Zephyr Homeloans saw a significant increase in buy-to-let mortgage applications in the last half of 2020, further suggesting a continued overall resilience in the UK rental market.

“Increased demand for detached and semi-detached properties will be of particular interest to the sector, with both landlords and tenants looking to adjust to the new circumstances that the pandemic has brought.”

The DPS said that average overall UK rent increased to £792 during Q4 2020, which is £12 (1.54%) more than in Q3 2020 and £19 (2.46%) more than Q4 2019.

Regional figures

London rents continued to drop during the period, standing at £1,317: £5 (0.38%) lower than in Q3 2020 and £28 (2.08%) less than Q4 2019.

This drop was biggest in Central London, where average rent was £1,377 in Q4 2020: £54 (3.77%) less than during the same period in 2019 (£1,431) and £14 or 1.01% less than  Q3 2020.

The capital remains proportionately the most expensive area in which to rent property, with costs standing at 39% of average UK income.

Two other regions experienced a decline in average rent between Q3 and Q4 2020 – the North East, where it fell ­by £9 (1.70%) to £520, and Yorkshire, where it fell by £12 (-2.15%) to £546.

The West Midlands experienced the largest percentage rise (£24 or 3.85%) during Q4 2020, reaching £647.

The North-East remained the cheapest region during Q4 2020, with rents accounting for 23% of average UK income.

Region Average Rent  Q4 2020 Change since Q3 2020 (£)% Change since Q4 2019
London £1, 317-£5-2.08%
South East £923£235.25%
South West £780£184.56%
East £831£160.97%
East Midlands £612£135.15%
West Midlands £647£245.89%
Yorkshire £546-£124.20%
North West£616£103.36%
North East £520-£90.39%
Scotland£652£196.54%
Wales£606£142.89%
NI£551£150.55%

For the full report, visit The DPS’ blog:  https://depositprotection.com/news/latest-news/2021/average-rents-grow-throughout-2020-the-dps-rent-index-q4-2020/